


Always and forever yours ~ R

by NightOfTheLand



Series: Sometimes all you need is love [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Death, Grief, Guilt, M/M, Mentions of Car Accidents, Sad, self blaming, why can't I write happy thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2201985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightOfTheLand/pseuds/NightOfTheLand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The casket was open and he now knew what his lover looked like laying there, so very still.<br/>"Did seeing him give you some closure?" Eponine's voice cut through his raging thoughts.<br/>He turned to look at her, "I doubt anything ever will."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always and forever yours ~ R

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been beta'd so all mistakes our mine.  
> Also, why can't I write happy things?

The sun spilled in through the large window, cutting sharp lines of shadow acrossed the face of the still sleeping man. His face was lax with sleep, eyes rolling gently behind closed lids, long silky blonde hair splayed around him on the pillow. He was curled half on his side, facing the closet, a green jacket held tightly in his arms, and as he began to stir awake he curled himself in tighter to the fleece hoodie. 

The first thing he noticed was the smell, it still smelled like him and for a moment the blonde allowed himself a small smile as he embraced the delusion. But only for a moment, because the minute he opened his eyes it was gone. The bed beside him was empty, the sheets cold and yet he could almost see the faint impression from where a head once laid on the pillow. He blinked against the sunlight and for a moment he felt nothing. Then he blinked again and couldn't fight the tears that welled up in his eyes. 

"Fuck," he swore as he rolled over on his back, throwing his left arm over his face to block out the light. He brought the hoodie up to his nose and breathed deeply. It smelled of paint, turpentine, cigarette smoke, and something else, something that had been uniquely him. Without the blonde's consent a tear escaped his eye and he swiped at it angerly. 

Beside him, on the bed side table, his phone rang loudly in the quiet room, the chorus of "Sexy Back" echoing in the silence. He was smiling slightly through his tears as he answered, Courfeyrac had that affect on people even if she wasn't around. 

"Hey, bud, did I wake you?" Were the first words out of Courf's mouth, and the blonde man shook his head. 

"Enj?" 

"Shit, no sorry you didn't wake me, Courf." Enjolras replied, shifting so he could sit up, squinting against the light. 

"Oh, good..." 

There was a few moments of silence, before Enjolras cleared his throat, closing his eyes, "Did you need something, Courfeyrac?" 

"Oh! Right! Yeah, I, uh, did you want me to pick you up, or..." She trailed off uncertain.

Enjolras's breath caught in his chest. "It's today?" He asked in a small voice, squeezing his eyes shut against the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. 

"Yeah, it's today." 

Enjolras took a deep breath, even though he felt like every breath of choking him, and exhaled noisily. He guessed time really had gotten away from him. 

"I'll be over in an hour to get you, yeah, bud?" Courfeyrac said in a calm tone, and she must have heard Enjolras's nod this time because she followed up with, "You gotta get up, I know it hurts and I know you don't wanna but you have to," she paused and let out a deep breath, "You have to for Grantaire, alright?" 

Enjolras took a shuddering breath at the name and breathed out a "yeah, I know" before saying goodbye and hanging up. The call screen blinked away and he was left staring at his screen saver. Bright green eyes stared up at him from under an unruly mess of dark brown curls. There was a smudge of paint on one cheek and on the other Enjolras was facing him and planting a big theatrical kiss complete with kissy face and all. This photo had been taken only three weeks ago. 

With a yell, he threw the phone across the room where it hit the wall and bounced to the hardwood floor. He screamed again burying his face in his hands, gasping for air as he dry sobbed, no tears coming, he was too angry for that right now. They had been happy, they had been so blissfully happy. R had been two years sober, and yeah it was hard for both of them sometimes, but it had gotten so much better. He had been working at the local community arts center in the evenings as an art teacher and he and Jehan had just opening a tattoo/new age store with Musichetta last year. The store was doing amazing and there had been talks of even moving to a bigger space. And all because of one stupid person.... Enjolras screamed again and pulled roughly at his hair, black spots dancing in his vision from lack of air. 

He forced himself to calm down, to get his breathing under control and then to get out of bed. Every step was agony and every moment made him wish he had been the one to have died. He was standing under the spray of hot water, pretending the wetness on his face was the water from the shower and not tears when the thought struck him. If his car hadn't broken down, if he hadn't called Grantaire but had instead called a tow truck, then Grantaire wouldn't have been on the road, he wouldn't have driven through that intersection, he would have been at home safe. 

Pushing that thought and all others along that line away he dragged himself from the shower and forced himself back into the bed room to get dressed. A pair of yellow eyes stared at him from Grantaire's pillow and he stared back. The white and brown and black tabby cat had been Grantaire's cat there was no doubt. The feisty feline wanted nothing to do with Enjolras on good days, and wouldn't even look at him on bad. And yet here he was, staring at the blonde human, his intelligent eyes shrouded in what could possibly be sorrow. 

Enjolras sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. He held out a hand and Cat meow'd sadly before slinking towards him. "I know, Cat. I wish he were here too." He scratched Cat's head lightly, eyes casting to the black suit that hung on the door of the closet. They sat like this, Cat's gentle pur filling the silence as he crawled all over Enjolras's lap, before the feline tired of the human and sauntered away. Enjolras shook his head with a sad fond smile on his face. Grantaire had loved Cat and had left him too, and Enjolras tried not to think about that as he stood to get dressed. 

 

There were more people at the visitation then he had been expecting. He supposed he didn't quite know just how many lives his boyfriend had touched before and after they had met. His mother was there, familiar green eyes filled with tears as she sat with her daughter, Grantaire's half sister. His father had died when he was a kid and his step father had passed a few months ago. A few other family members had shown up but none that Enjolras knew well. 

Enjolras was most surprised to see so many members of the community present, everyone from the little old widow who lived around the corner to the young family who had moved in across the street. Grantaire had touched so many lives and it hurt and healed Enjolras in the same moment.

All of their friends were there,of course, Courfeyrac having helped him stagger from the flat and out into the world after what seemed like days of hiding and wallowing. Jehan, Joly, Bousset and Musichetta had been there waiting when they had arrived. Marius and Cosette had arrived a few minutes after and Bahorel and Feuilly had come in a little after that. Enjolras had greeted them with a greatful heart and had welcomed their comfort. 

They had all come in and made their way to the flower draped half open casket that sat front and center in the long somber room. Enjolras had pointedly avoided looking in that direction and some part of him thought that if he didn't he would wake up and find out this had all been a nightmare and that Grantaire would be asleep in bed beside him, snoring gently. 

"You need to see him, Enjolars." A soft voice broke his thoughts and a tiny hand grasped his elbow lightly. 

He looked down at the petite woman standing next to him, brown hair streaked with all the colors of the rainbow, a piercing in her left eyebrow and one in her nose. Her brown eyes were lined with heavy black eye liner and though she wore a black dress he could see bright green heels peaking out from under the hem. Her left arm was covered in tattoos and though he'd had never officially met Eponine before, he knew without a doubt this was her. 

"Eponine, I assume?" He asked by way of reponse. 

She smiled at him, and despite her tough appearance she seemed rather gentle at heart. "It's good to meet you, Enjolras, I wish it had been under better circumstances and that I had been able to come into town for a more pleasurable reason other then a funeral, but you need to see him." She nodded in the direction of the open casket, "It might bring you some closure." 

He looked towards the casket and blinked several times refusing to let himself cry in public, before he turned back to speak to Eponine again but she was gone. So he sighed, and weaved his way through the crowd until he stood only a few steps away from the casket. Taking a deep breath he crossed the last few steps before he stood next to the open coffin and closing his eyes, he steeled himself, before he finally looked down. 

The first thing he noticed was Grantaire had been dressed in a suit. He hated suits and refused to wear them, though he did like to tell Enjolras that he liked to see his sexy boyfriend in a suit almost as much as he liked to see him out of it. Enjolras's lips twitched at that as his eyes traveled to Grantaire's face. The last time he had seen his boyfriend's face he had been laying in a hospital bed, face covered with cuts and scratches with tubes coming out of his nose. He choked on a sob as he brought his knuckle up to bite on. Now Grantaire's face was poised, his eyes closed, skin waxy looking and he could see where the makeup had been caked on to cover the bruises and abrasions. The flyway curls had been tamed and were flat against his head. Grantaire looked nothing like himself.

Enjolras took a deep breath through nose, held it for a moment then exhaled quietly. He knew that when people said the dead looked like they were sleeping that there were saying that to comfort themselves, and he wished that Grantaire looked like he was sleeping,but instead he looked dead. Enjolras choked on another sob and laid one hand against the coffin, trying to steady himself. 

"I love you," he murmured through his shaky breaths, eyes sad as he looked down at Grantaire, "I love you so much, and I don't know what I'm going to do without you." He squeezed his eyes closed, and ignored the tears that slipped past his lashes, "I don't want to live without you, Taire, I don't want to wake up without you next to me. I don't want to have to do this alone. I love you and I miss you and I need you to come back to me I need you to not be dead!" He gasped for air as he felt his tears choke him, hands griping the edge of the casket tightly, "Please, I don't know what to do now, please.... I'm so sorry, you know I am, and I love you, I love you so much, and I will never not need you." He swiped angrily at his tears with both hands, taking a heavy wet breath, "I will never say good bye, because you aren't gone. You will never be gone." 

Enjolras wiped at his face again, squared his shoulders with a nod and one last agonizing look at his husband's face before he turned away from the casket. He stepped past all the mourners, dodged his friends and found he could only breath again once he was outside. Standing on the porch under the over hang, wraped in a leather coat smoking a cigarette was Eponine. She quirked an eyebrow at him as he braced himself against the porch rail and panted as if he had just run a marathon. 

"Alright there, chap?" She asked around taking a drag from her cigarette, blowing the smoke in Enjolras's direction. 

"How did you know I was Enjolras?" He asked, ignoring her question.

She gave a light laugh that was filled with dark tinges of sorrow and anger. "I looked for the hottest blonde in the room and took a leap of faith." She told him, she took another drag before she continued, "The way he talked about you, man, I had never heard R talk like that before. He was head over heels in love. He would call me before you two started dating, drunk off his ass or high or whatever and just emote about how he would never be good enough for you. That he would never live up to your standards." 

Enjolras tried to swallow past the lump in his throat when she paused to give him a look. "Then you both finally got off your asses and did something and I had never heard him so happy. Like I could practically hear him fucking smiling through the phone. And he started taking care of himself and shit, I always thought I'd be told he'd OD'd in a dirty bathroom somewhere or had died from alcohol poisoning, but when he was with you and when he got clean, I thought well, hot damn, he's gonna live forever now just to fucking spite me. And, well, I know he died happy at least." 

"How do you know he died happy?" 

"He had just picked up a ring he had ordered just for you. He had called me to tell me he was hiding it at home when your call buzzed through. He was over the moon, Enjolras, and he was going to propose because he loved you and knew that you loved him and he wanted you to spend the rest of your lives together." She told him, sniffling as she stubbed out her cigarette, before lighting another. 

Enjolras stared at her in stunned silence before he turned to look back out at the snowy world before him. He felt a chill shiver up his spin as the wind cut through his suit jacket. Somewhere out there was the man in the SUV who had downed a whole bottle of whiskey before getting behind the wheel and had run the red light slamming into Grantiare's beat up red Volkswagen. That man was alive and had come out of the accident with barely a scratch. And then there was Grantaire, who had been planning a proposal, who had turned his life around and had been the love of Enjolras's life. The blonde sighed as anger and sorrow and guilt and pain and all these emotions he couldn't name swam around in his mind. 

"Did it give you some closure?" Eponine's voice cut through his raging thoughts. 

He turned to look at her, "I doubt anything ever will." 

 

At random intervals for the next three months Enjolras's phone would buzz with reminders. Not things he had set himself, and not reminders that were of things to be done. Instead they said things like, 'Remember I love you' and 'You look handsome today' and 'Don't be at the office all day, I miss you'. When they first started happening Enjolras would stop what he was doing and if he was alone cry softly to himself, if he was in public he would excuse himself to the restroom, stifle his sobs and if anyone noticed his red puffy eyes when he returned no one said anything. About a month and a half after Grantaire's funeral he no longer cried at the reminders. He would smile sadly, murmur a soft reply and then continue on his business. 

Enjolras had also begun cleaning up the flat. He had started in the kitchen, packing away the chipped and faded mugs that Grantaire had favored, he didn't entertain so he packed away the silverware and dishes that were in excess. He had recently done the closet and had cried for the first time in months when he was finished. It looked so empty now, without R's clothes hanging next to and intermingled with his. The spare bedroom that had been Grantaire's art studio remained untouched and Enjolras had a feeling it would remain that way for a while. 

When the reminders stopped four months after the funeral, Enjolras canceled all his appointments and meetings for the next day and spent the day at home wrapped in R's favorite hoodie imagining that it still smelled like him, with Cat curled up on his lap as they watched crap TV. 

Six months after the funeral Enjolras ran into Eponine outside the grocery. She had just gotten back into town and had been down at the shop thinking that Jehan and Musichetta (whom R had always spoken so highly of) would need another tattoo artist after, well after Grantaire died. When she said this Enjolras didn't cringe, he just nodded thoughtfully and asked if she wanted to come over for dinner. She accepted and they spent the evening telling stories about Grantaire and laughing and crying and remembering and healing together. 

Three months after that night Enjolras left work early, bought flowers and sat in the cemetery for over an hour talking to Grantaire. As he was leaving he could have sworn he felt a hand brush through his hair, the same way Taire used to do when he was being affectionate. 

Fourteen months after the funeral, Enjolras finally opened the door to the spare bedroom. As he did he was hit by the familiar smell of paint, turpentine, cigarette smoke and that something that was uniquely Grantaire. Cat had followed him hesitantly, yellow eyes wide and tail twitching in the air as he scoped out the room. Sitting on the paint splattered work bench, in plain sight, was a small blue ring box. Feeling a familiar lump in his throat he crossed the room. Picking up the box, he set it aside in favor for the envelope it had been sitting on that had his name scrawled acrossed it in a familiar sloppy handwriting. 

'Enjolras,' it read,

'So, this isn't how it's supposed to be done, and hell I've probably already fucked this up one way or another, and I've never been good with words, not like you. I've never been able to tell people how I feel, so 'Ponine suggested I write you a letter, and so here it is. 

'Where do I even start? Maybe with the first time I saw you? Yeah, well I heard you before I saw you. You and Courfeyrac were telling people about the unfair discrimination in wages against minorities. You were a Greek god, standing on that podium, fist raised high, all righteous fury and blonde hair. You were Apollo, you were the sun. And I didn't even know you and I was in love. 

'And I started coming to your meetings. I thought you hated me, I really did. You scowled at me and we argued and none of my opinions matched with yours. So imagine my surprise when you kissed me. And yes it was you who kissed me first, not that I'm keeping track or anything. You became so much more then an untouchable god, Enjolras, you became my beacon of hope, my chance at salvation. And you saved me. You did. Don't shake your head and deny it, because I know that's what you are doing right now, and because it's true. I would have died, or have been in jail or something equally as bad by now if it weren't for you. 

'I haven't had many people in my life tell me that they love me for me. Most people just want something or they just don't tell me at all. I know I'm nothing special, I'm not much of anything, an art school drop out, but when you look at me, when you tell me you love me, it makes me feel like I can fly. 

'I say all this to say, and I don't think I could ever find the words to say it out loud, but, Jullien Enjolras, I love you, will you marry me?' 

Enjolras sat in the middle of the floor, clutching the note to himself, tears running down his face, while Cat rubbed against him, tail flicking in concern. The ring in the box was a simple silver band. On the inside it had five words engraved 'Always and forever yours ~ R'

Four years after the funeral Enjolras stopped wearing the ring on a chain around his neck. It hung in a shadow box along with the last photo of the two of them together. Eponine had been working at the shop for three years now and she and Enjolras had become good friends. A new lawyer named Combeferre had joined the firm last year, and he and Enjolras had been out for coffee a few times. Each time came with less and less guilt and sorrow and eventually got to the point where Combeferre had stayed the night several times and Enjolras felt as if he was finally moving on. 

When Cat died several years later, Enjolras spread the feisty feline and Grantaire's fur baby's ashes next to the man's headstone. He knew that they were playing with the red dot together wherever they were in the afterlife. Even after Combeferre and he had settled into a long term relationship, Enjolras still visited the grave on every birthday and anniversary. Enjolras still loved Grantaire with all his heart, he had just found room in it for someone else.

'Renard Grantaire  
June 18, 1982  
-  
February 7, 2014  
Beloved Son, Brother, Lover and Friend'

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if writing more in this 'verse would interest you all. I might even try for something happy!


End file.
